S. R. Praveen

Balti comes accompanied with the tag of a ‘sports action film’, with Kabaddi being the sport in the spotlight. For a while in the beginning, debutant filmmaker Unni Sivalingam appears to be keen on living up to this tag, serving us some intensely fought and tastefully shot Kabaddi matches. But by the halfway point, Kabaddi gets firmly pushed to the background, only for a glimpse of it to be shown in the epilogue.

To create a humorous situation around the ubiquitous ‘Dolo 650’, like the one in Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Karam, requires a certain amount of ingenuity. But, humour depends on the setting as well as the timing, and this particular attempt at comedy may have worked in a different setting. In Karam, it just happens to be placed in the middle of a person’s attempt to breach and bust a dreaded human trafficking ring, causing the humour to fall flat.

Sometimes, the final moments in a movie suddenly brings its title to mind, making us marvel at the ingenuity of naming it that way. Jeethu Joseph’s Mirage attempts something similar, only that one is left wondering how the titular warning was not fully understood. The final act of the movie is filled with mirages, one scene after another, each of which misleads us into thinking that this is the big reveal, only for the screenwriter to throw another ‘twist’ in the tale at us. After encountering several such mirages, one huffs and puffs to reach the real climax of the film, vowing never to trust any character in a film. In the larger scheme of things, screenwriters Jeethu and Srinivasan Abrol are also seeking a mirage — that of the perfect thriller climax which no one would guess. Red herrings, convoluted stories and obscure incidents tenuously connected to the narrative are thrown at us with this sole aim. That also proves to be the film’s undoing.

Folklore carries with it the natural burden of old ways of thinking and the inherent tendency to not stray from what has been handed down over the generations. Often, when filmmakers take inspiration from folklore, knowingly or unknowingly, their approach to the material too is weighed down by the past. In ‘Lokah Chapter 1 : Chandra’, folklore appears to have inspired the people behind the film to think anew, not just in terms of the film, but for the Malayalam film industry as a whole. A particular bit of folklore that almost every other Malayali has grown up with, but has been forgotten in recent years, courses through the veins of Lokah in its original form in a flashback sequence for the ages, which has some of the best use of intercuts. It is also a lesson in using well-timed flashback sequences, delaying that revelation until close to the halfway point, leaving behind some major impact. This revelation will send a chill down the spine for most Malayalis, but it is doubtful whether it will resonate in the same manner outside Kerala.

Towards the fag end of Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira, when one character asks - “Do you sense any logic in this joke?”, it appears to be one last-ditch effort to convey the filmmaker’s intentions to the audience. Clearly, the film is set in an absurdist landscape. It is the kind of film in which the father of the protagonist, who has slipped into a coma, would say, ‘Till now, he was a question mark to us, now he has become a com(m)a’. But such jokes, which land, are few and far between, for even absurdist humour requires a sense of timing and rhythm for it to work. What we get instead is a series of misfires that punctuate a screenplay with no sense of direction, just like the protagonist Eby (Fahadh Faasil). We are pulled into his life the night before his wedding, when his fiancée, Nidhi (Kalyani Priyadarshan), expresses a wish. In the quest to fulfill the same, Eby ends up facing a crisis.

The need to move out of their comfort zone ceases to be a necessity for filmmakers when they find success with their favourite tropes. That has been the case with Sathyan Anthikad for over four decades. Even as the film industry changed around him in unrecognisable ways, and despite a few slumps, he continued to have some level of success with his signature style. Anthikad’s previous film, Makal (2022)— which also dealt with the tried-and-tested — had a conservative protagonist who struggled to understand the mindset of his teenage daughter. But, in Hridayapoorvam, one finds a filmmaker who has a clear intent to connect better with a younger generation, without, of course, letting go of his family audience. The casting of a few popular online content creators, an odd fit in the Anthikad world, although an industry trend, is not a coincidence. One can also notice the influence of his sons, Anoop Sathyan, the associate director, and Akhil Sathyan, who penned the story, in how he has approached the scenes.

The anticipation of violence is as mind-numbing as violence itself — the expectation that someone who has taken a hit will retaliate, with several ways to do so. In Sangarsha Ghadana - The Art of Warfare, which begins with a violent hit by one gang on another, filmmaker Krishand prolongs this anticipation to upset the audience’s expectations of what would transpire during that period. Kodamazha Suni (Sanup Padaveedan), a former gangster who has moved on and is now living a respectable life, has just lost four of his trusted lieutenants in a brutal attack by an unknown gang led by Kunjan (Vishnu Agasthya). One would expect the man to be plotting his revenge, especially when he sits with the other members of his former gang. The comical policemen tailing him also probably expected the same. But go closer, and the conversations are about a pepper drink and special masala dosa that Suni would like to have before leaving the city.

Cops without any baggage are so hard to find in movies these days that the police officer protagonist and even the entire police station in Soothravakyamstand out as different, although not exactly in a good way. Neither do they have personal troubles, nor are they challenged much by professional assignments for a good part of the movie. It leaves them enough time to run a tuition centre for school students on the top floor of the police station, with Circle Inspector Christo Xavier (Shine Tom Chacko) doubling up as a teacher. The police are so diligent in their teaching that they even go to the extent of visiting the houses of students who are absent from class. So much so that Nimisha (Vincy Aloshious), the teacher at a nearby school, feels students are losing interest in her class because of the tuition classes at the station. In Eugien Jos Chirammel’s debut directorial, this teaching activity of the police is projected as one of its novelties, but we are never told how it came about. Just like the rest of Soothravakyam, nothing is explored beyond what you see on the surface. Not even a single classroom exchange is shown to convey the equation that the officer shares with the students.